Editorial: Fans' love for NFL referees is only temporary

Our view: The NFL's regular referees are back, and the fans' new-found love for them will last until the first penalty flag against their team.

The replacement referees have been banished back to their high school and small-college leagues, and NFL fans and especially NFL players are rejoicing.

Not everybody is happy, though. They will be missed by, among others, editorial cartoonists, Twitter jokesters, late-night comedians and the Seattle Seahawks.

We've barely just discovered the parody Twitter accounts, such as "NFL Replacement Ref," who tweets such things as: "Wait, they were playing football? This whole time I thought I was reffing hockey," and, "Who do you guys want to see in the Super Bowl? Make an offer," and, "Aaron Rodgers called me. It went straight to voicemail and said, 'Sorry I missed your call.'" Funny stuff, and now he and his 6,000 followers will be denied such levity.

And we won't be able to see Twitter headlines like this: "NFL now giving replacement refs the ability to use a 'Phone A Friend' or 'Poll The Audience' lifeline before making important calls." Or this: "Earlier today, NFL replacement refs released the final scores for next week's games."

The replacement referees made Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agree on something. They gave all Americans a reason to forget about high unemployment, an economy in the tank and uprisings in the Middle East. They served as inspiration for those creators of "South Park" who are running out of ideas. They made Foot Locker stores suddenly relevant again. They made Las Vegas casinos $150 million richer (as if they need any more of gamblers' money) with one call that even people who know nothing about football could figure out was atrocious.

The NFL's credibility took a serious hit with a three-week effort by the league office to show those regular officials who's boss. The officials wanted more money and better benefits. The NFL — a multibillion-dollar industry — said no way.

After three weeks of embarrassing officiating, one awful call handing an undeserved victory to the Seahawks on "Monday Night Football" forced the NFL back to the bargaining table. A deal was struck in less than two days.

Football fans are thrilled — and will remain so until, oh, Sunday. Over the past three weeks, fans have nostalgically treated the regular referees as infallible, as if they never made a mistake. This sudden love affair is built on amnesia. Remind a Raiders fan about the "Tuck Rule." Or ask a Chargers fan about Ed Hochuli. Every fan of every team, if you give them a minute, can recall in vivid detail some point in the not-too-distant past where his or her team was jobbed by the refs. Or so they think.

When the referees return for the first full Sunday of games this week, we predict it will be fewer than 10 minutes in every stadium before a referee is booed for a call against the home team, and fans in the stadium or watching on TV turn to the person next to them and say, "I miss the replacement refs."